Who is degenerate – the furious tyrant who abhors freedom or the artist moving towards truth?

Who is degenerate – he who closes, hides and gags or he who opens windows and offers choices?

Who is degenerate – he who beats, persecutes, tortures and kills or he who devotes himself to life?

Who is degenerate – he who lives in darkness or he who offers light?

The degenerate scares, expels, exiles: forbidden from practicing his art, the German expressionist Wilhelm Wöller fled his homeland, had his paintings vandalized, and died young.

Thanks to the Junqueira family, Casa Stefan Zweig does its duty with the Memorial to Exile and presents the work of one among many artists who today would be better-known had degenerates not come to power.

Alberto Dines

Pushkin launches new English translation of Zweigs historical miniatures

A coleção invisível (The invisible collection), directed by Bernard Attal and inspired by Stefan Zweigs' novel, received four awards at the Gramado Film Festival. It was acclaimed as the best film by the Popular Jury and got the "Kikito" award for best supporting actress (Clarisse Abujamra) and best supporting actor (Walmor Chagas, the grat Brazilian actor who deceased last January).

The Gramado Film Festival is the most important Brazilian film festival held annually in the city of Gramado, Rio Grande do Sul (south of Brazil) since 1973.

80 years ago, Romain Rolland called on Zweig to fight anti-Semitism

"...A great Jewish voice must rise up, its pathetic cry is expected – a cry of pain, of just pride and of accusation. The world expects this. It must speak without worrying about all the “what use is it?”, the false scruples, the concern about saving our brothers threatened with persecution. The whole Israeli question is at stake. Why do I say this, I who do not take part? If someone has the honour to belong to such an ancient and vilified people, he should assume this loud and clear and cast the affront back at the persecutors... My friend, if you go to London, speak! Speak for all those who haven’t spoken! For your people! And right now this means: for humanity!”This dramatic appeal by Romain Rolland to his pupil Stefan Zweig exactly 80 years ago today sends us back with surprising vigour to those dark times filled with hesitation and doubt. It is perhaps one of the most intense texts written by this figure, who was impregnated with nobility and humanity, author of Jean Christophe, and Nobel Prize winner in 1915.Rolland foresaw the Final Solution almost a decade before it was put into practice. He wanted a Jewish voice to stand up to denounce the trap.Stefan Zweig took two years to rise to his master’s appeal, his disgust at party politics – at the time being fought between Communists, social democrats and liberals in the struggle against Hitler – hindered him from recognizing the premonition contained in the appeal.In 1935, he prepared the minutes of a manifesto (the only one he wrote) to be signed by German-speaking Jewish intellectuals. He sent it to Albert Einstein and Max Brod, among others. It was filed away, unanswered. The full text of this manifesto is included in the volume of essays by Stefan Zweig, Mundo Insone, being launched in September by Zahar.Alberto Dines, 23rd July 2013

Death in Paradise (4th edition) and new translation of Marie Antoniette

During a visit to Brazil and Uruguay, the German deputy Reiner Deutschmann (FDP) visited Casa Stefan Zweig in Petrópolis, and the tomb of Zweig and his second wife Lotte. Below, with CSZ manager, Dora Martini.

CSZ has qualified to receive very important support from the government of the State of Rio de Janeiro through an agreement with the Secretary of Culture. A total amount of R$250,000 (around 100,000 Euro) will be disbursed over the next 24 months. The funds will go to financing projects such as workshops to train teachers and to serve students from municipal and state public schools.

The museum Casa Stefan Zweig is almost ready and should open in July. The bungalow where the writer lived and died in Petrópolis, at Rua Gonçalves Dias 34, is in the final phase of reform, and still depends on funds which will come through fiscal incentive laws. Inside, the lighting, floor finishing, painting and office furniture are still missing. Click and see the photographic report on the work’s progress.

Zweigs memoirs, mailed to his publisher a few days before he took his life in 1942, describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two World Wars and the Hitler years.The eBook was produced by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc and can be read on just about any device, Kindle, Nook, computer, tablet, smart phone, or other eReader. It is available worldwide on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The special programme of Observatório da Imprensa, which recalled the 70 years since the publication in 1941 of Brazil, Land of the Future, by Stefan Zweig, six months before the double suicide in Petrópolis, can be seen at the page: http://www.observatoriodaimprensa.com.br/videos/ultimo (Portuguese only) The programme has interviews with the historian Fabio Koifman, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and writer Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna.

The reform works at the house where Stefan and Lotte Zweig lived in Petrópolis are going full steam ahead. To put the house back in its original state from 1941, when the couple moved to Petrópolis, and adapt it to the function of museum, engineer Mario Azevedo and his team from M. Marc Arquitetura & Construção had to “strip it bare”, as can be seen in the series of photos in the report sent by the engineer. Mario Azevedo also photographed the museologist Priscilline Alto during the work of cataloguing the books and documents which will make up the CSZ archives. The Casa Stefan Zweig museum should open its doors to the public in March 2012.

See photos of the works

Zweig's death mask donated to CSZ

On 29th June CSZ received a very important donation: a bronze copy of Stefan Zweig’s death mask made by the sculptor Dr. Annibal Rodrigues Monteiro, who was also his dentist in Petrópolis. The piece was given by his children, Regina Maria Monteiro da Silva and Romolo Rodrigues Monteiro, and officially handed over to CSZ president, Alberto Dines, by the sculptor’s daughter. It will receive a notable place at the museum, which should be inaugurated by the end of the year in Petrópolis.

Rodrigues Monteiro made three death masks of the author, as requested by the director of Petrópolis city hall health department, and they were then cast in bronze at Fundição Cavina, Rio de Janeiro. One of the original masks was donated in 1993 to Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro. Monteiro is also the creator of other busts, such as that of Oswaldo Cruz, Princess Izabel and Airton Senna (link to see a list of sculptures by him)

See below the death mast, the sculptor working on 23rd February 1942, and the donator, Regina Maria Monteiro da Silva, with Alberto Dines, Beatriz Lessa and Fabio Koifman, of CSZ.

The town of Petrópolis has a commitment to the memory and history of Stefan Zweig, as reaffirmed by mayor Paulo Mustrangi during the official closing of the exhibition Stefan Zweig Vive! which, since its inauguration on 14th January, has received over 1,200 visitors. The ceremony was attended by a large audience and personalities such as the president of Fundação de Cultura e Turismo de Petrópolis, Charles Rossi, who praised the cooperation with Casa Stefan Zweig, and the Austrian ambassador, Hans-Peter Glanzer, who highlighted the dichotomy between euphoria and despair, the Brazil of the future and the world of yesterday in which the Austrian writer lived.

Afterwards there was a joint lecture by the president of CSZ, Alberto Dines, and the pro-rector for Cultura e Extensão at Universidade Estácio de Sá, the writer Deonísio da Silva, who is finishing a book about Lotte, Zweig’s second wife, to a packed Afonso Arinos Auditorium. For nearly two hours, the audience had the chance to discover details of the writer’s life and work.

The exhibition Stefan Zweig Vive! can be visited until next Sunday, 1st May, and should move to Rio de Janeiro during the second semester. The inauguration of the Casa Stefan Zweig museum is planned for the end of this year.

Stefan and Lotte Zweig's South American Letters

Stefan Zweig was an incessant correspondent but as the 1930s progressed, it became difficult for him to maintain contact with friends and colleagues. As Zweig's correspondence all but ceased with the outbreak of World War II, little is known about his final years. Even less is known about Lotte Zweig, his second-wife, secretary and travel-companion. This book provides an analysis of the Zweigs? time together and for the first time reproduces personal letters, written by the couple in Argentina and Brazil, along with editorial commentary. Furthermore, Lotte finally emerges from her husband's shadows, with the letters offering significant insights into their relationship and her experience of exile.

Darién J. Davis is an associate professor of history at Middlebury College, Vermont. He has written on race, migration and twentieth century intellectual and cultural history. Oliver Marshall is an independent historian based in Sussex, England, who has published on South American and international migration history. He has been a research fellow at the University of London?s Institute of Latin American Studies and at the University of Oxford?s Centre for Brazilian Studies and its Centre for Latin American Studies.

This picture, which was sent to CASA STEFAN ZWEIG by Jeffrey B. Berlin, emeritus professor of comparative literature at Holy Family University, shows the Austrian writer with his American publisher Ben Huebsch. Huebsch was editor and vice-president of the Viking Press (New York), which, beginning in 1926, began publishing SZ's works in English translation. Although the posthumously published The World of Yesterday volume does not identify its translators, in fact, it was Ben Huebsch, together with Helmut Ripperger, who prepared this translation, first issued by the Viking Press in 1943. In 1964 the University of Nebraska Press began publishing The World of Yesterday under its imprint, with the introduction by Harry Zohn. Incidentally, SZ regarded Huebsch as his most trusted and very best friend, and, as years passed, their unique friendship continued to be enhanced. (Huebsch only translated one of SZ's other works, namely, the also posthumously published and classic novella The Royal Game.)Photo: privately owned by Jeffrey B. Berlin..

Brazil, land of the future still stirs up hearts and minds. The prestigious supplement Mais+ from the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo of October 181h is entirely dedicated to this book of the Austrian writer. Go to Stefan Zweig and Texts to look up the essays (in Portuguese language) by historians José Murilo de Carvalho and Ronaldo Vainfas, do anthropologist Hermano Vianna and sociologist Maria Alice Rezende de Carvalho, among others.

Video

The new video about the history of the CASA STEFAN ZWEIG initiative can be seen on line. Go back upwards at the green column on your right side and click.

Symposium in Fredonia

A symposium on Zweig and his transatlantic connections brought together sixteen European and American specialists during three days at the State University of New York in Fredonia. The historian and specialist in Exile Literature, Marlen Eckl, held a conference during the event and showed a video about CASA STEFAN ZWEIG. Marlen Eckl is the German translator of the biography Morte no Paraíso, by Alberto Dines.

At Fredonia Opera House, film-maker Sylvio Back screened his feature film Lost Zweig and talked about “The Unfathomable Gesture”. He also launched the bilingual edition (Portuguese and English) of the film’s screenplay (Imago, 2008). The University of Fredonia has the largest iconographic Zweig archive in the USA, which was opened in 1981, the centenary of the author’s birth.
Click to read two articles published by the local Observer.

Collection Izabela Kestler

It is with great sadness, and also deep gratitude, that CASA STEFAN ZWEIG announces the generous donation of the exile literature received by the family of the Germanist professor Izabela Kestler, tragically killed in June in the Air France plane crash. Our special thanks go to her husband Milton Correa Lopes Junior, her sister Izana, and her parents. With this gesture, they allow the precious collection of books, magazines, manuscripts, letters and tapes with original recordings of German speaking refugees in Brazil, to become accessible to researchers in this country and all over the world. The material is already being catalogued and will be part of the future archives of CASA STEFAN ZWEIG in Petrópolis. The team that is building the Memorial to Exile, under the coordination of historian Fabio Koifman, is now seeking sponsors in order to be able to digitalize the recordings and to organize the Izabela Kestler Fund. We pay our posthumous tribute to the researcher who, working tirelessly for over two decades, carried out such vital work for the memory of the history of exile in this country. Click to see a partial list of the titles being catalogued.

CASA STEFAN ZWEIG took part in German Language Day in Petrópolis on 17th June, with a talk by Alberto Dines at the Imperial Museum. Organized by the Catholic University of Petrópolis, the aim of the event was to share aspects of the history, education and new perspectives of Austria and Germany, and was attended by the Austrian Consul, Peter Waas. Pictured, Alberto Dines and the director of the Imperial Museum of Petrópolis, historian Maurício Vicente Ferreira Júnior.Photo: Jörg Trettler

Alberto Dines and consul Steinberger, April 2009. Photo: Jörg Trettler
The team at CASA STEFAN ZWEIG offers its condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the Austrian consul Reinhold Steinberger, who passed away on 30th April in Ica, Peru. The consul general in Rio de Janeiro several years ago, Steinberger was an early enthusiast for the idea to reform the house where Stefan Zweig lived and died in Petrópolis. He always supported the initiative. He opened up his residence for the official launch of the CASA STEFAN ZWEIG project, in 2006. A week earlier, at the same house, in the presence of ambassador Hans-Peter Glanzer, he hosted the ceremony in which the president of CSZ, Alberto Dines, received the Austrian Order of Merit for Science and Arts. Steinberger died suddenly at the age of 55 in a car accident. His wife Jane Steinberger, who was accompanying him on the trip to see the Nazca lines, was trapped in the wreckage, but suffered only grazing. Reinhold Steinberger was buried a few days later in Austria. He is survived by his wife and two children.

The exhibition catalogue Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants) contains a facsimile of the correspondence between Stefan Zweig and Lasar Segall. Its price is R$60 and can be found in the lobby of the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo.

The future Stefan Zweig Center is being installed in Salzburg at Edmundsburg castle, high up on Mönchsberg, with a splendid view of the cathedral (photo), the castle and Kapuzinerberg. The building will also house the Center for European Studies of the University of Salzburg.

Welcome to the world of yesterday, today. To the magnificent land of the future which has never managed to solve its present. To the gallery of world builders, defeated heroes and victorious antiheroes. To the commotion of feelings, to letters from strangers and friends. To stellar hours and to moments of misery from which we learn so many lessons.
Welcome to pacifism, although we are aware that the world is in a state of permanent war. To humanism and tolerance, in this world which is increasingly dominated by intolerance.
Welcome to Casa Stefan Zweig, to meet the man, the writer, his life, his work and his legion of friends – from yesterday and today – and to share his ideas and hopes. Alberto Dines, chairman of Casa Stefan Zweig